1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the art of packaging or protectively wrapping large diameter reels of paper for transport.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The finished product of the papermaking process is a continuously issued web approximately twenty feet (6 meters) wide. For shipment to customers and converters, the web is slit into a multiplicity of more manageable widths and wound into cylindrical reels or rolls of normally three to six feet in diameter. Shipment weights of such reels may range from 1700 to 9200 pounds.
To protect such finished reels of paper from handling and shipment damage, the usual industry practice is to wrap the reels with a heavy grade of paperboard having a thickness caliper of 0.009 inch or greater.
The presently prevailing technique for such reel wrapping is to draw a strip of wrapping board from a supply reel of greater axial length than the reel to be protected. This web strip is wrapped tightly about the cylindrical surface of the protected reel. The axially overhanging portion is crimped radially inward toward the reel center and tightly creased against circular reel end. To seal the reel ends and hold the crimps down against the end faces, two circular header disks of approximately the same diameter as the protected reel are used at each reel end-face. One disk is inserted within the surface wrap overhang flush against the reel end-face. Adhesive is then applied to the outer face of this first or inner disk. Next, the overhanging portion of the surface wrap is crimped and pleated into the inner disk adhesive. Thereafter, a second or outer disk having adhesive applied to the inner face thereof is pressed against the outer face of the surface wrap pleats.
Common to all such prior art wrapping methods is the need for circular, usually die cut, header disks of substantially the same diameter as the reel. If several different diameter sizes are prepared for shipment by the producing mill, it is necessary to make, or purchase and store such respectively sized header disks preparatory to use.
Moreover, the mere need of several sizes of header disks creates a material handling obstacle at a reel wrapping station where several different reel sizes are wrapped in mixed succession. As the reel is circumferentially wrapped, the operator must select the proper disk size and manually place it against the reel end-face within the overhanging flange of wrapping material that is to serve as the crimped pleats.
Although these tasks are neither difficult nor excessively time consuming under relaxed conditions, in many cases the papermachine produces more rapidly than the product can be wrapped: even with the aid of semiautomatic equipment.
Another prior art reel wrapping technique was apparently first disclosed by A. W. Coggins et al in their 1926 U.S. Pat. No. 1,612,262. This Coggins et al wrapping technique requires a header sheet that is larger than the reel end face thereby leaving a peripherial flange that is pleated over onto the cylindrical surface of the reel. Subsequently, a girth wrap is applied about the reel circumference over the pleated header sheet flanges. Although dormant for many years, the Coggins et al wrapping technique has recently proven to have numerous advantages over the other, more familiar, technique. First, there is little criticality to the header size thereby permitting one size of header to accommodate a wide range of reel sizes. Second, it is not necessary for the header to be circular thereby permitting square or rectangular header shapes which may be cut by automatic machinery from supply rolls with no waste disposal. Third, there is one less step in the reel wrapping sequence thereby permitting a faster cycle rate. Finally, the technique is adaptable to automatic application machinery which simultaneously creases the header over the entire circumference of the reel end face corner and onto the cylindrical surface of the reel as opposed to an incremental pleating advanced serially around the reel circumference. The copending application of the present co-inventor John DeLigt, Ser. No. 833,300 filed Sept. 14, 1977, discloses a machine of the type described.
In view of the recent rediscovery of the Coggin's et al wrapping technique, no machinery aside from the aforedescribed DeLigt machine is presently available to practice the technique. This circumstance exists notwithstanding the fact that the Coggins et al method is most adaptable to practice by automatic machinery.
It is therefore, an object of the present invention to teach a novel method of practicing the Coggins et al reel wrapping technique.
Another object of the present invention is to teach the construction of novel machinery to practice the present invention method.